RAMALLAH: Almost all 2014 victims of work accidents reported inside Israel are Palestinians from the West Bank.
In addition, the number of deaths (estimated at 60) in 2014 is just below the total number of Palestinian work deaths in Israel during the whole of 2013 (62).
Palestinians widely attribute the high death rate to official carelessness and lack of concern for Palestinian labourers, some of whom enter Israel illegally to work.
A senior official from the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions said that the number of work incidents reported involving Palestinian labourers constitutes a serious phenomenon which Palestinian authorities will study and take proper decisions.
The official stressed that the high injury and death rate undoubtedly proves that Israeli society handles work incidents involving Palestinians in a careless manner which highlights a clearly racist Israeli perspective regarding Palestinian labourers.
The official said that the vast majority of Palestinian labourers who lost their lives inside Israel were construction workers who do not receive even the minimum level of safety measures from their Israeli employers. “The way those labourers are recruited strips them off their working rights as they enter Israel illegally and join the work force their without holding official work permits,” said the official in an interview with Gulf News.
The official said that the victims were all young Palestinians (of the age group 20-40 years old) and that in most cases, they did not hold Israel work permits as they did not meet the Israeli standards for permits.
Israel sets the condition that an eligible worker should be at least 40 years old and married with three kids in order to be issued a work permit. A security clearance is also needed to get official approval for a work permit and the labourer should also find an Israeli employer to sponsor him inside Israel.
The official said that Israelis impose strict rules and regulations in terms of the employment of Palestinian workers, but at the same time knows that at least 35,000 Palestinian labourers sneak inside Israel for work. Those labourers often enter Israel in the sight of Israeli soldiers, but those labourers do not have any rights to claim in the case of work accidents.
The official said, “This issue should end — the Palestinian and Israeli counterparts should address it and come up with satisfactory decisions to reduce the number of the deaths among Palestinian labourers.”
The official stressed that the family of deceased labourers do not have the right to claim compensation as the Israeli judicial system does not provide a chance for such legal action. The official said that it was true that the weekly salary of the illegal Palestinian workers was higher than that of legal labourers, but the Israeli employers usually prefer to employ the illegal workers who do not have any legal or work rights at all.
